Burley · 2025 · Formal garden pool
A pool for an old orchard
Fifteen metres of glass mosaic, set between eighty-year-old apple trees without losing a single one.
The project
- Location
- Burley, New Forest
- Pool
- 15 × 5 m, 1.1 to 1.8 m deep
- Finish
- Glass mosaic, Purbeck coping
- Heating
- Ground-source heat pump
- Cover
- Slatted, under the coping
- On site
- 14 weeks
- Finished
- June 2025
Sarah’s grandfather planted the orchard in 1946. She and Tom wanted to swim among the trees, not instead of them.
The only level ground was the gap between two rows of Bramleys, and the roots ran right through it. Most firms told the Ashbys to lose six trees. Ellie walked the orchard with them on a wet March morning and drew the pool to fit the gap instead.
We hand-dug the first metre so we could see every root, bridged the shell over the two largest, and kept the machines on boards in the lane. The water is a soft green-grey glass mosaic, chosen to sit quietly under the leaves.
How we built it
Working around eighty-year-old roots
Hand-dug where the roots ran
We dug the first metre by hand with an arborist beside us, so every root over a thumb’s width was found, wrapped and kept.
A shell that bridges, not cuts
Where the two oldest trees reach under the pool, the concrete shell spans across their roots on piles rather than cutting through them.
Mosaic the colour of the leaves
A green-grey glass mosaic and Purbeck coping, so the pool reads as part of the orchard rather than a blue rectangle in it.
In their words
“They didn’t lose a single apple tree. Three summers on, the children still ask to swim before breakfast.”
Sarah & Tom AshbyBurley · Formal garden pool, 2025
Begin here
Start with a walk round the garden
A first visit is free and unhurried. We’ll look at the light, the levels and the trees, and tell you honestly what’s possible.